


I know enough of hate

by starling



Category: Norse Mythology, Thor (Movies)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-09-25
Updated: 2012-09-25
Packaged: 2017-11-15 00:50:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,409
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/521313
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/starling/pseuds/starling
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"In the aftermath of the battle I went into the temple, and I found a baby.  Small, for a giant’s offspring.  Abandoned, suffering, left to die.  Laufey’s son."</p><p>There is more to this story than you might think.  This is the story of Farbauti - the best of Loki's fathers - in the final days of the war.</p>
            </blockquote>





	I know enough of hate

"In the aftermath of the battle I went into the temple, and I found a baby.  Small, for a giant’s offspring.  Abandoned, suffering, left to die.  Laufey’s son."

 

The embers of the fire are all that remain, bright against the ash.  The starless sky rumbles with promise, and the younger children cling to their mothers in fear of the approaching storm.  

“One more story,” Dotta says, and the woman around the fire agree reluctantly - the shifting clouds have begun to worry even them.  “You all know the stories of Thor, of thunder and lightning, of oak and strength, the defender of mankind,” Dotta begins, and the children nod enthusiastically - Thor is a particular favourite of theirs, and the mention of his name is usually enough to banish fear of a storm.  But the children are a little too fascinated by the remains of the fire, so Dotta has another story for tonight.  

“Well, Thor creates lightning, wielding his mighty hammer.”

“Mjolnir!” calls a boy, punching the air with a stick in his hand.  Dotta continues, her voice low, and silence falls again among the children.

“But there was another, who did not create lightning.  He _was_ lightning, and the power that rends the sky in half was in his footsteps and at his fingertips.  His name was Farbauti, meaning Dangerous Striker, and he was a Jotun.”  A collective gasp from the children - a performance of fear.  “And Farbauti married a Jotun by the name of Laufey - Laufey’s name means Leaf Island.”

“A tree?” suggests a young girl, and Dotta smiles.  They are getting better at the kennings.

“Very good,” Dotta says.  “Now have a guess - what happens when lightning strikes a tree?”

The children don’t take long to reach the end of the story, after that clue.

“The tree catches fire.”

"The fire spreads, if there isn't enough rain."

“The forest burns.”

“Wildfire.”

“Loki.”

“Farbauti and Laufey were Loki’s parents," Dotta explains.  

 

 

The story that Dotta told to these huddled children, in this cold and windy corner of Earth, was rarer than she knew, for there are stories told on Earth that remain untold on Asgard.  

There are other stories, rarer yet, which die on Jotunheim.

 

 

A thousand years before Dotta was born, on the other side of the universe, Farbauti did not feel like he was lightning.  He felt like he was made of brittle ice, and the temple walls would burn him all away.

 

 

Laufey lay upon a bed of snow, and faced this battle like any other.  

It was not a difficult birth, but Farbauti held Laufey's hand in his nonetheless, murmuring encouragements and not a single complaint as Laufey gripped him so tight that he shivered in his bones.

And then it was done.  Farbauti lifted his tiny, gurgling child up, and presented him to his other father with a tentative smile.

“He is too small,” Laufey said, looking away after a moment of examination.  “He will never be the son I need.  We cannot afford weakness, in this time of war.”

Farbauti had always known this would be a possibility; Laufey had never been dishonest with him.  Still though, to hold a child in his arms - the feeling was more than Farbauti could have prepared himself for.  He had a  _son_ , and he was tiny and fragile and quite possibly useless - but he was Farbauti's  _son,_ and something in the boy's wide red eyes gave Farbauti a reckless kind of courage that did not feel like courage.  It felt like weakness and desperation, but had she known of it, Dotta would have given it the name of courage.

“Laufey, please -

“You will leave him somewhere the Asgardians are bound to find him,” Laufey interrupted.  

"You would have our son slaughtered by strangers?  You would allow another son of Jotunheim fall to these _monsters_?"

“I would have his blood on their hands, not mine.”

“I beg you -“

“I am your king, am I not?”

Some things must be absolute or they are nothing - there was no room for negotiation now.  To deny the king when he names his kingship would be to threaten his very throne, and Laufey had never been merciful when faced with treason.  Farbauti nodded.  “I will leave him.”

“You will,” Laufey repeated.  “My eldest is to be my heir; you know that.  We will have time to grow stronger children, sons who will be our soldiers.”

"I know," Farbauti said.  "You are right."  The words tasted like bitterness in his mouth, and he tried not to look at the child in his arms.  "But - let me do it myself.  You owe him that much."

"I owe nothing," Laufey hissed.  "I am a _king_ , and I will take what is mine.  We will kill them better, after this."

The war, then.  Always the war.  Farbauti swallowed the treasonous words that threatened to spill from his tongue, and carried the child from the room.

 

 

Farbauti was no king - only the lover of one - but he knew, in his way, what it was to be a king.  To be a king was to live in absolutes, to fill oneself with conviction strong enough to rouse armies and to make no room for sentiment or weakness.  And to be the son of a king - that was a risk indeed, for only the strongest princes may live.  Laufey had been born tall and strong and gleaming, and he had grown to be a king who was always reaching.  Farbauti's nameless son would win no such honour, fleeting as it may yet prove.

 

 

Jotunheim truly was beautiful - the snowfall lying pure and white on the roofs of the city, the icy columns gleaming, magnificent arches carving through the air and clothed in sparkling crystals.  Farbauti’s son, too, was beautiful - there was a fierce energy to the way he thrashed his limbs, wild and childlike as he was, and now and then he would look up at Farbauti in a moment of stillness with bright intelligent eyes.

The shining days of the past - when Farbauti and Laufey had been young and in love and fearless, and Laufey had spoken of Earth like a fruit waiting to be plucked - they seemed as distant as a soon-forgotten dream.  This war of Laufey’s had grown in his heart like a weed, and it had broken more than any peace could repair.  How long before this great city was a battlefield of muddy water and death in the streets?  Asgard controlled the Bifrost; it was only a matter of time before their armies came for the Casket.  And when they came, they would kill Farbauti’s son as well.

It was a matter of days, and Farbauti did not see Laufey in all that time.  He was busy with his duties as king - rallying the people, going over maps and battle plans and strategies.  Farbauti busied himself with caring for his infant, despite knowing that the child had a death sentence on his head.  There was no need for him to suffer just yet - he could be as any other child, until death found him.  The boy remained nameless - better that way, better that Farbauti did not have a name to mourn.  

 

 

When the warning bell sounded, and enemy soldiers poured into the streets, Farbauti took the boy and headed for the temple.  The priests had all left - they were soldiers too, everybody had to be in these times - and the air was still and quiet.  Farbauti placed his child on the altar, and paused in the silence.  This, too, was a sacrifice; another piece of Farbauti offered up for Laufey’s sake.  

Farbauti hid himself behind a curtain, and waited.  The battle raged outside, and Farbauti felt a coward for his absence - he was strong, he ought to be defending his home.  He kept his vigil over his son, though, and could not bring himself to leave.  Not until he knew his son's fate.  Nobody entered.

After some hours, the sounds of the battle died down.  Farbauti became aware of an ache in his chest, deeper and wilder than his pre-emptive grief for his son.  Something was lost to him that he had been born knowing.  The Casket was in Asgardian hands, then.  The battle was lost- the _war_ was lost.

Part of him hoped that nobody would come - this was sacred ground, after all.  For all Laufey’s hatred of them, Farbauti had always suspected that the Asgardians were not quite so cruel as they seemed - perhaps they would not rob the temple.

But footsteps came, in time.  Odin Allfather himself entered the temple, and he entered alone.  Farbauti’s heart raced - he could do it, he could kill Odin now, and he clenched his fist, forming a weapon of ice.  He felt that he was not as strong as he might have been even that morning, but that was no matter - the Casket could be regained, everything could be repaired -

But first, the child must die.  Laufey’s command was absolute.  Odin approached the child, and and Farbauti braced himself for a blow.  The boy began to cry, and Odin winced at the sound of it.  That’s my boy, Farbauti thought to himself.  Then Odin lifted the child, and his skin changed from blue to pink in the Asgardian’s arms.

This was powerful instinctive magic, the likes of which Laufey would value.  How had he failed to notice this?  Why did he never think to check?  His child had skill enough to please his king, but he was now in the arms of an enemy.  Farbauti had to get his son back.

“Don’t cry,” Odin said, patting the child awkwardly.  _What_?  The baby continued to cry, and after a while Odin seemed to give up, but he did not put him down.  “I could do with another son,” he said, and smiled.  

No - no!  His son in the hands of the enemy - it was unthinkable.

“I’d prefer it if you didn’t attack me,” Odin said, and Farbauti jumped, surprised to be discovered.  “I’d hate to kill you in a temple.”

Farbauti stepped out from his hiding place, and faced Odin openly.  “He is Laufey’s son,” he said.  “He was born to be a king.”  Leave him here, he prayed silently.  Do not take my son from me. 

“Yes,” Odin said, “he may yet be king in Jotunheim.”

“You will not take him,” Farbauti said.  Not now that he had a chance to truly live - a miserable life it would be, a Jotun in Asgard, taken to be raised into a puppet king.

“You left him here to die,” Odin said, and Farbauti could not deny it.  Odin had seen, then, that Farbauti would have abandoned the child, had he stayed Jotun blue in Odin’s arms.

“He is my son,” Farbauti replied, and Odin nodded, seeming to understand.  He did not put the child down.  Farbauti leapt at Odin, ready to slash at him with his arm.  Odin was faster, though, and buried his sword in Farbauti’s side.

“There may be a truer peace yet,” Odin said, voice heavy with the weight of the dead.

 _Love him_ , Farbauti would have said.  _Bring him here, that he may meet his kind_ , he would have said.  _Do not raise him to believe himself a monster, as you believe me to be_ , he would have said.

Farbauti said none of those things, because the wound was deep, and his life had fallen away before he had the time to form the words.  He could only hope that Odin’s famed wisdom was not an exaggeration.  

 

 

When the news came of Farbauti’s death, Laufey did not weep, but had he wept for anyone in all his life, it would have been Farbauti.  He assumed his son dead, and he took a new lover, and had two stronger sons, and ruled the ruins of Jotunheim with hatred in his heart.

Farbauti had hoped, in those brief moments before his death, that his child might grow to maturity in Jotunheim, and then go to Asgard, become a snake in the grass that might retrieve the Casket and sweep winter through the streets of Asgard for Laufey’s sake. He had hoped the boy could prove himself a worthy weapon in the war - the only thing that Laufey could ever value in a son in these times.

But Loki was named and formed in Asgard, and it was in Asgard that he grew into a shade who returned to Jotunheim with a smile and brought death in his wake, doing terrible things for Odin's sake.  When he was still outcast, still rejected, it was only fit that he did not rest until the Nine Realms burned.  He would prove himself something stronger than ice.

 

 

Around that campfire, worlds away, the children are still there, sitting in mute appreciation of the story.  They had never thought to imagine Loki's parents before - he had seemed to need them no more than a star did.  Loki created himself, surely - for who would think to forge him?   

"There is a reason you have heard Loki’s name before, and not Farbauti," Dotta continues.  "Lightning is nothing to fear, because for all its power it is trapped in the sky, and it is silent without thunder.  Wildfire is what will burn the forest, and fire is what you must fear more than lightning.”

“Must we fear fire more than thunder?” a boy asked.  “More than Thor?”

“Thor is sworn to the defence of mankind,” Dotta reminded him.  “You need not fear him.  Loki is wildfire, and fire may light the darkness and cook your food and frighten away the beasts of the forest, just as Loki helped the Aesir time and time again, but if you trust the fire to allow you to come close or to be constant when your back is turned, then you are a fool.  Loki will betray the Aesir because chaos and deception is in his nature, and it is in the nature of fire to burn.  You may use fire for your purposes, but you must always, always fear it. “

 

"There is no end to it... there is only the war." 

 

Some say the world will end in fire,  
Some say in ice.  
From what I’ve tasted of desire  
I hold with those who favor fire.  
But if it had to perish twice,  
I think I know enough of hate  
To say that for destruction ice  
Is also great  
And would suffice.

\- Robert Frost

**Author's Note:**

> In the legend, Laufey is Loki's mother. In the comics and the MCU, he is Loki's father. I've decided that he can be both - I've read Jotuns as essentially genderless, with male pronouns to simplify things. Anyone can get pregnant, although god knows how that works.
> 
> This story is partly my attempt to reconcile Loki as a frost giant with the Loki of Runemarks (an excellent book by Joanne Harris which I've borrowed from) and with the terribly expressive and emotional nature of Loki as played by Hiddleston. Loki as wildfire is a comparison that make all the more sense in a canon where he is desperate to reject/escape his nature as a Frost Giant.


End file.
